I stopped writing on this blog, I know. I wrote because it gave me a voice, it gave me power, and then I started to find that within myself and now...now we are back. I do not know if I will publish this, if I am just typing into the abyss because journaling by hand takes too long and I enjoy the methodic click clack of the keys. But here I am. Writing once again.
Depression comes and goes for me, and I have the privilege of forgetting what it feels like when I am not in it. As the seasons change, as the winter blues set in, I am in a constant battle between trying so hard to be fine while knowing I am denying my own sadness.
It's an illness, I know that. It is a mental illness and it is not something that I can ever be fully rid of. But I forget, again and again, what it feels like. How the simple offer of a hug will break me down into tears. The stinging in my nose when I am trying not to cry because I have no reason to cry but my brain does not know how to react other than to cry. So I let the tears drip down my face and I don't wipe them away. I tell myself that maybe that will do something. Maybe wiping away my tears is an act of finality, of telling myself I am crying now and I am not ready to accept my tears. My tears tickle my chin. I wipe them away.
I am doing everything right. I already increased some of my anti-depressants in preparation for this time. I am practicing light therapy every day. I take my weekly zoom sessions with my therapist and I take time to recharge and refuel and yet here I am. I wish it could stop.
Depression is nothing like anything. It feels like nothing, feels like an emptiness where your emotions should be. As if I am nothing but an overflowing vessel of emotions with a hole in the bottom that is leaking out fast.
I don't know what to do. I guess that's why I'm writing this. I feel better, I think. Maybe it's just giving myself some breathing space. Journaling always sounds so meaningless until I try it, and then it changes things. It shifts my lenses, a rubix cube clicking pieces into place. I am nowhere near my completed form. I am still a shell of myself, I still feel as though I am grasping at pieces of myself that are wiggling away.
Tomorrow I have work. I will be teaching young children in a job I love, in work that at this moment, I love more than parts of myself. I am admitting to myself now that things are getting bad again, so maybe this will change. Maybe it will begin the process of making things better.
It's not going to make it go away. If I could wish myself out of depression, this story would've been over years ago. I can feel muted and still live my life every day. I can be everything I need to be in this moment. I can cry because that's what my body needs from me right now.
Depression is all encompassing. It picks and prys at every piece of you, whether or not you want to fight. Part of that is just adulthood, choosing to go into each day and fighting whatever demons you cross. We all have demons of different varieties. My anxiety is loud and booming. My ADHD is chatty. My depression is silent, deathly silent in a way that takes away the power of everything around me.
But I am taking that power back. Right now. My annual depression battle has begun, and I am ready with swords and pens.
